Year: 2023
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Trevor Stace’s diverse employments include instrument technician, paralegal, and historian. His First Nation mother hails from Little Grand Rapids in northern Manitoba. His non-Indigenous father parlayed his instrument technician employment into his own manufacturing firm. Stace enrolled at the University of Alberta to please his parents. He dropped out, and worked as a gas station attendant, then as an assembler of gas meters and later shipper/receiver. Eventually he returned to U of A, while working part-time for his father’s firm. A degree-completing classical history course in Rome led to Stace being urged by his professors to become a history professor. Stumbling on unexplored materials regarding small, rural coalmines during the 1932 Crowsnest Pass Strike, Stace equally stumbled into labour history and the study of ignored workers and employers in small collieries. During studies for his PhD at Western, Stace moved to North Battleford where Indigenous lawyer Eleanore Sunchild hired him as a paralegal on cases of Indigenous day students who became victims of sexual and physical assault. In 2022, he became a Parks Canada historian, researching sites nominated for recognition by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Stace has also served as a planner and interviewer for ALHI’s Indigenous Labour History Project.
Keywords: Assembler, gas meters; Crowsnest Pass Strike, 1932; Eleanore Sunchild; Gas station attendant; Instrument technician; Indigenous day students; Labour historian; Little Grand Rapids; Parks Canada historian; Paralegal.
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See also: Indigenous Labour in Alberta; Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta